Operation Pocket Money

Operation Pocket Money was a US aerial mining campaign which targeted the North Vietnamese port city of Haiphong during the Vietnam War.

After the Easter Offensive, President Richard Nixon announced that the only way to stop the killing was to keep the weapons of war out of the hands of "the international outlaws of North Vietnam". Le Duan's Easter Offensive was a great gamble, but Nixon undertook an even bolder move, targeting the flow of weapons and supplies provided by China and the Soviet Union. He ordered 11,000 mines to be laid in Haiphong harbor (through which 85% of North Vietnam's imports came) to prevent Chinese and Soviet ships from supplying the NVA in a controversial operation which threatened the planned summit between the USA and the Soviets on 11 May 1972. While China and the Soviet Union denounced Nixon's action, they did nothing, and, on 26 May, the USA and the USSR signed a historic anti-ballistic missile treaty, the first treaty to limit nuclear armaments since the start of the Cold War. The mines would ultimately be removed from 6 February to 27 July 1973 after the Paris Peace Accords.